EGU24-15475, updated on 09 Mar 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-15475
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Seismic Data Archive in the United Kingdom to support Nuclear Test Monitoring

Sheila Peacock1, Peter Bartholomew1, and the Forensic Seismology Team*
Sheila Peacock and Peter Bartholomew and the Forensic Seismology Team
  • 1AWE, Blacknest, United Kingdom of Great Britain – England, Scotland, Wales (geophyspeacock@myphone.coop)
  • *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract

In 1961, AWE Blacknest became the home of Forensic Seismology in the UK, with the aim of developing and maintaining a capability to provide seismological advice to the UK government. During the 1960s the group set up a seismometer array in Scotland and worked with host countries to set up arrays in Canada, Australia (now both IMS stations), India and Brazil. AWE Blacknest has continuous data archives from these sites dating back to 1961 on a mix of paper helicorder records (seismic and infrasound traces), analogue FM-encoded tape and digital tape. From 2006-15 Blacknest developed and ran an extensive programme to overcome the ageing issues presented by vintage magnetic media condition and formats, and recovered and digitised the tapes, putting the continuous data on to modern computer storage systems. Since the 1990s data have been directly recorded to digital storage systems. Historically only events of interest, including data recorded from suspected nuclear explosions, were extracted, and Blacknest is running a programme of analysing these events and preparing the data and analysis in a form for public release. I will present on the work undertaken to develop the programme, data recovery and digitization methods from magnetic media, and the modern storage systems Blacknest use for serving seismic data. This will also include analysis work and the data inventories that Blacknest is making available.
UK Ministry of Defence © Crown Owned Copyright 2024/AWE

Forensic Seismology Team:

John B. Young1, Neil Selby1, Karen Pelling1, David Green1, David Edwards1, David Bowers1, Rick Bolton1, David Barfoot1, Norma Wallis2, Debbie Porter2, Steve King2

How to cite: Peacock, S. and Bartholomew, P. and the Forensic Seismology Team: Seismic Data Archive in the United Kingdom to support Nuclear Test Monitoring, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-15475, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-15475, 2024.